September 14, 2015

Week 1 of fantasy football sees me up by 24 going into tonight's games. I'm done for the week, but my opponent still has Adrian Peterson left. Will 24 points be enough? I'm certain that AP is highly motivated to have an enormous game and I'm also certain that the Vikings management wants that as well. If he starts rolling they are going to go with it as long as they can. I want to see him have a good game, but let's keep it to 23 or under, okay?

Over the weekend I took a look at the latest allegations against the Patriots, that they deliberately screwed with the Steelers by piping the Patriots Radio Network into the headsets on the Pittsburgh sidelines. I had always figured that communication system was a fairly straightforward challenge, but it turns out that it is a lot more complicated than I thought. On game day there are more than just a couple of teams to worry about in the stadium:

Quarterbacks, defensive play-callers, coaches and game officials all depend on coordinators to ensure that their systems are interference-free. So do TV and radio broadcasters and reporters, medical and security personnel, staff who use the NFL’s instant replay and injury video review systems, concession operators, cleaners, halftime entertainers and many more.

Given the information from there and a few other stories I've read, it is doubtful if not impossible that the interference came from the wireless portion of the communication system. To be heard in those headsets it had to be mixed into the audio stream before it got to the wireless transmitters on the field. That would point to the wired "infrastructure" the NFL noted in its statement on Friday. It's likely that some sort of grounding or shielding problem in that wired infrastructure allowed the audio from the radio broadcast booth to interfere with the audio from the Steelers coaches booth, since they are probably in some general proximity to one another.

To throw a bone to the conspiracy theorists, it's not impossible for that interference to be introduced deliberately. However, given the complexity involved in game day communications, both wired and wireless, I think Occam's razor should apply. The problem can be explained reasonably without creating a conspiracy, of which there apparently is no evidence. Just because cheaters cheat doesn't mean they always cheat.

Great post by Robert Zubrin on the Malthusian underpinnings of the environmental movement in general and the climate change maniacs in particular. I recommend reading the whole thing, but here's the core argument:

The fundamental question boils down to this: Are humans destroyers or creators? If the idea is accepted that the world’s resources are fixed, with only so much to go around, then each new life is unwelcome, each unregulated act or thought is a menace, every person is fundamentally the enemy of every other person, and each race or nation is enemy of every other race or nation. The ultimate outcome of such a worldview can only be enforced stagnation, tyranny, war, and genocide.

But if we choose instead to have faith in the power of unfettered creativity to invent unbounded resources, then every new life if[sic] a gift, and every person, race, and nation becomes ultimately the potential friend of every other, and, rather than suppression, the fundamental purpose of government must be to protect human liberty at all costs.

As I've mentioned here before, the harnessing of fossil fuels has had enormous benefits for humanity and nature too, when it stops deforestation for example. The challenge is not to stop using them, it's to spread to the rest of the world the clean technology that has dramatically reduced real pollution in the US and Europe.

A convicted sex offender and international drug dealer from Ontario was caught with an equally soaking wet fellow Canadian after they swam from their homeland across a river and entered the U.S. illegally at the far northeast corner of Minnesota, a strategy the felon had used previously without detection, according to federal prosecutors.

As the story goes on to say, they got him because an anonymous informant rang up the Border Patrol and warned them. Allegedly the man had done that four or five times before.

I know that area and points west for 100 miles pretty well and it is not hard to imagine this being a successful strategy in a lot places. Scott Walker was misrepresented and took a lot of unfair heat for his comments about the US-Canadian border a few weeks ago, but those of us who know the area know how vulnerable it really is. After all, without that informant this guy would probably have gotten away with it again.

The Twins took 2 out of 3 at the White Sox this weekend and start a 10-game homestand tonight against Detroit. They are one game back of the Rangers for the second wildcard spot, who are only a 1.5 games behind division leader Houston. Those two start a 3-game series tonight. Kansas City looks to have the Central sewn up, but the rest of the postseason spots are still in play.

January 28, 2015

If the people who claim to fight for the environment, really fought for the environment, instead of harping about carbon dioxide they would night and day be screaming about the horrifying real pollution that China is spewing into the air:

China’s notorious smog can feel like a physical manifestation of the country’s political repression: suffocating, censored and potentially lethal.

On many days, the sun is hidden behind a pale, brown veil of coal dust and other pollutants that is visible from space and smells like a chemical spill on fire. The United States Embassy’s air quality readings — widely viewed as more accurate than China’s official data — are censored on local smartphones. Air pollution has been linked to a spike in cancer rates in Beijing, a city made almost “uninhabitable for human beings” by smog, according to a study published last year by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

May 23, 2014

Dr. Robert G. Brown of the Physics Department at Duke University ponders the greenhouse effect of water vapor. Even the most freakish climate alarmists have to agree that water vapor is, by an enormous margin, the most influential greenhouse gas.

May 15, 2014

Forget about working for the weekend the last full week of September 2015:

And we have – as I said, we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos. And I know that President Obama and John Kerry himself are committed on this subject and I’m sure that with them, with a lot of other friends, we shall be able to reach success on this very important matter.

That was French foreign minister Laurent Fabius at a press appearance Tuesday with John Kerry. If the calculations are correct that leaves them until Thursday, September 24 2015 to "reach success."

Or not.

What Fabius said there was complete drivel, soundbite claptrap for gullible fools. 500 days? Is he sure it's not 501? What about 499?

The answer, of course, is that he pulled the number "500" directly out of his ass, followed shortly by the term "climate chaos." "Climate chaos" appears to be shaping up as the new "climate change," which was the new "global warming," which was the new "global cooling." "Climate extremes" is also making a run to be the latest marketing campaign, but I think "chaos" has a little more pizazz.

The glaring truth is that nothing those two and the Obungler could come up with, short of economic suicide, will have any significant effect in the next 16 months. Which is okay, because the deadline itself is as phony as a three-dollar bill.

Scare tactics and high-pressure sales techniques should be the purview of door-to-door vacuum cleaner or used-car salesmen. It's dismaying that much of our Western political elites can so easily be pictured as standing in a pennant-ringed lot, wearing a plaid sport coat, and asking, "What's it going to take to get you into this climate chaos?...Today!

On a related note, here's a good piece from Bruce McQuain on that Antarctic ice scare story I mocked the other day. It notes not only the uncertainty of the studies, but also an unmentioned undersea volcano in the area that is an alternate theory on why the water around the clacier may be warming, if it really is. I recall seeing similar theories around Arctic ice minimums a few years ago.

May 13, 2014

The vast glaciers of western Antarctica are rapidly melting and losing ice to the sea and almost certainly have "passed the point of no return," according to new work by two separate teams of scientists.

The likely result: a rise in global sea levels of 4 feet or more in the coming centuries, says research made public Monday by scientists at the University of Washington, the University of California-Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Good news?

Yes, because it means we can stop arguing about climate change. If it's a done deal then there's no point in impoverishing ourselves with useless restrictions and taxes on fossil fuels. Instead we should rededicate our efforts to adapting to the changes that are apparently inevitable.

February 26, 2014

Hey, I'm a taxpayer. For twenty years now they've been promising us global warming, I think it's damn well time they deliver. I mean, take a look at this crap:

With yesterday and last night that makes another eight subzero nights in a row. Today we might see 21°F, but they are warning about 40 mph winds and blowing snow for the eveing commute. Then a swift drop in the temp, with an outside chance of hitting -20 overnight.

I'll let Peter Finch sum it up for me:

Hahaha...of course the vast majority of us have no choice but to take whatever Mother Nature dishes out. My highly intelligent father is one exception—he's spending the next two weeks down in Texas.

August 30, 2013

The Northwest Passage after decades of so-called global warming has a dramatic 60% more Arctic ice this year than at the same time last year. The future dreams of dozens of adventurous sailors are now threatened. A scattering of yachts attempting the legendary Passage are caught by the ice, which has now become blocked at both ends and the transit season may be ending early. Douglas Pohl tells the story[emphasis in original]:

The Passage has become blocked with 5/10 concentrated drifting sea ice at both the eastern and at the western ends of Canada’s Arctic Archipelago. At least 22 yachts and other vessels are in the Arctic at the moment. Some who were less advanced have retreated and others have abandoned their vessels along the way. Still others are caught in the ice in an unfolding, unresolved drama.

August 16, 2013

Yeah, I guess Obama told him! It doesn't get much bolder than defying a man who has been dead for nine years.

In the mythology of the so-called reality-based community, the evil Reagan tore out those solar panels because he couldn't stand the thought of fossil fuels not being burned and he wanted the whole world to choke on the fumes and...Evil! Reagan was evil, evil, evil!

June 02, 2013

KOOCHICHING-NORTHERN ST. LOUIS-NORTHERN COOK/NORTHERN LAKE-
CENTRAL ST. LOUIS-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...INTERNATIONAL FALLS...ELY...ISABELLA...
HIBBING
322 PM CDT SUN JUN 2 2013
...FREEZE WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 7 AM CDT MONDAY...
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN DULUTH HAS ISSUED A FREEZE
WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 7 AM CDT MONDAY.
* LOCATION...FAR NORTHERN MINNESOTA INCLUDING THE BORDER
REGION...IRON RANGE...AND INLAND AREAS OF THE ARROWHEAD.
* TEMPERATURE...EXPECT LOWS TONIGHT FROM THE MIDDLE TWENTIES TO
AROUND THIRTY.

I'm finally getting my gardens squared away today and tomorrow and the cool temps during the day are kind of nice for that, though lows in the 40s at night are a bit much. The lawn, totally out of control a week ago, has at last been wrestled into submission.